The Importance of Branding and Positioning

If you’ve been following along with our videos, you probably noticed we had re-branded recently.

Today, I want to discuss the importance of branding and positioning. As search marketers here at Directive, we focus so much on new user acquisition. This is also known as getting new visitors to our website!

However, we are passionate about what happens once visitors arrive. We continually incorporate CRO optimizations, and our design team builds our landing pages strategically.

But, remember, we aren’t a branding firm! This post is to resonate with you in-house marketers out there. You’ll want to be prepared to plead your case to your executive team regarding the importance of branding.

How are people discovering or interacting with you?

Importance of Branding in Search

Moving on, one of the optimum ways to understand the health of your brand is by just putting in your company name into Google.

For us, it would be “Directive *space* Consulting.” Recently, we have transferred over to the name, Directive, but we haven’t perfectly owned that word yet. By putting in the word “directive,” a space, and then “consulting,” we find various search results.

To start, we start seeing third-party review sites. What are our clutch.co reviews? What are our Glassdoor reviews? What is showing up when someone’s researching us, and they’re either looking to work at Directive, or as a client with us.

What we have to ask ourselves is what is the brand positioning? At the end of the day, who cares if you rank number one for a term, or if you’re driving traffic from your paid campaigns if people aren’t enjoying what they discover?

Understand the importance of branding by the success of SEO, PPC, and content. Check what people are searching for and what they’re saying about our brand.

Communicating Value Proposition

The next thing to review is how you are communicating your value proposition to people who land on your site.

Check in on the following:

1. If you’re a software company and have product shots of your software, step back. Are they intriguing? Does it look like your product should cost a lot of money? Are your aesthetics pleasing? Does your color scheme make sense? Is your padding right on each page?
2. Check that your words include strong calls-to-action and that your copy is clear. Instead of saying “learn more”, would it be better to say “start today?” Does your copy drive your viewers to do something?

As search marketers, we help send traffic to websites. But what really matters is how that traffic turns into opportunities, deals, and revenue.

One of the most underrated and affordable investments we can make is ensuring our brand represents the quality of our company and our work. If people see a janky brand, but we have great work, how would they assume that or know that, right?

If your branding is off, your audience will not fill out the form you want them to because you didn’t grab their attention in the right way. Is your form for someone to get a demo or schedule a proposal 20 questions long? Is it an overwhelming process, or a multi-step form breaking it down into bite-sized pieces?

All these little aspects affect the success or failure of your campaigns. When people go on social media, does your company look like a quality, nice place to work? If not, why would someone want to apply there?

Brand Positioning Success

Strategically think about if you were a customer and had three brands to consider. From there, ask yourself, would you be one of the best three for your customers?

To be one of those “three” and beat out the competitors, you have to be the best. From your sales process to your marketing materials to your positioning to your product offering, the small details go a long way.

People aren’t going to just fill out your form. If we aren’t better than the competition or at least aspiring to be, why would we expect them to take the time out of their day to look into our services?

The most essential thing you can do is ask yourself is, “If I were to discover our brand today, would I choose it over the competition?” Take that to heart, my friends. Focus on the details and make your brand stand out for the better.